Jar Of Hearts
by cathedrals
Summary: And who do you think you are, running 'round leaving scars? A Collection of fics and ficlets that were written for different prompts & challenges. Nate, Serena, Blair and Dan, in various constellations.
1. Nate

Fic: Allegory of the Cave [589 words]

Prompts: _Plato's Allegory of the Cave _andthese lyrics by the All American Rejects:

_You're sweet just like the sun, but what happens when the sun doesn't stay? Night reminds me when you went away._

* * *

When Serena leaves, it's like she takes the light with her. He knows that that sounds like a fucking cliché, but hey, his whole life is a fucking cliché at this point so it kind of fits.

It's not like he's stuck in endless night now, he can still see. It's more like all the colors are gone. She left him, and now he's stuck with grey and black.

It feels like he's living in one of those movies Blair adores so much. And just like in those movies, nothing makes sense. Blair says they do, just pay attention Nate they have meaning, but to him it doesn't and they don't. Maybe that means that he has never paid enough attention, at this point he doesn't care.

During their junior year, in their philosophy class, they once talked about this guy, Platon, or was it Plato? Nate isn't sure; he was never that good at philosophy.  
Their teacher, had looked so old that Nate had suspected that he had actually met the ancient Greek philosophers himself, no kidding.  
And he had always wanted them to think and discuss the what if's and had encouraged them to look for the truth, and Nate had never been that good at finding truths.

Still wasn't.

Anyway, this Plato wrote a thing called the Allegory of the Cave.

It is about some people who are locked in a cave since the day they've been born. They are chained to the ground; they just sit there in the dark. The only thing they've ever seen are the shadows that are playing on the cave wall they're facing. So, because they've never seen anything else, they think that those shadows are real. And when one of them is freed, and able to leaves the cave, he sees the real world.

At first the light and the beauty of it all hurts his eyes, but after a while he's able to really see. And he realizes what lie him and the others have been living.

Then, with all this new knowledge he has to returns to the cave. But because his eyes are now used to the sun, he's lost his ability to see in the dark. And he has realized that the shadows are nothing but that, shadows, illusions of things that may exist somewhere, and they have lost all meaning to him.

When he tries to tell the others, that they aren't really living, that their whole world is just an illusion they don't believe him, at first they laugh at him and then they get angry, but because he doesn't stop, tries to convince them again and again, they kill him.

Nate remembers that, back then, when he had been sitting in class next to a sleeping Chuck, and had been thinking about Blair and Serena he had thought that maybe it had been worth it for the guy. Because at least he had seen the light and known the truth, instead of living his life surrounded by shadows and illusions, because to Nate, living your whole live in an illusion had sounded far worse.

Now it's different, what's wrong with living an illusion? (As long as you don't know what the real thing could be like.) So fuck the light and the truth, because even if you have seen them you still have to go back to your cave.

And if you had never seen that stupid light in the first place, then maybe living in the dark wouldn't hurt so much.


	2. Serena

Ficlet [342 words]

Prompt: _Sometimes, she asks herself if there is more. Shouldn't there be more?_

* * *

Everybody loves Serena.

It has always been like that, and she knows it too.

A smile and everything falls into place. A word and she gets her wish. Money from Lily, favors from Blair, attention from Nate, countless drinks from Guys whose names she never seems to remember. Serena Van der Woodsen always gets what she wants. (As long as she doesn't want them.)

It's not like she can help it, (because she tried, like really tried), she sees Blair's smile vanishing when she thinks Serena isn't looking. Knows what she does to her best friend by simply being. It's not her fault though, because what use would it be to tell the sun to stop shining?

Sometimes, people really hate her. She knows that she disappoints them, she stumbles and trips, falls of her pedestal, she knows that she fails, and sometimes she feels like they want her to. That it makes them feel better. Calms them somehow.

_Look at Serena, she's like totally wasted._

_Did you see that picture of her on Gossip Girl? It looked like she was about to pass out._

_Did you hear that she slept with that guy? Like gross._

_I heard they almost kicked her out of school, because she got caught smoking weed, again._

(The next time, Blair's smile stays.)

Men love her smile, her big blue eyes; they adore her long legs and full breasts. They don't care if the smile is fake as long as her body is warm and willing and real.

Sometimes, she asks herself if there is more. Shouldn't there be more?

She won't allow those thoughts to stay; she tries to drown them with strong drinks and drugs, with parties and Chuck, and Georgie and Svetlana. She distracts herself with shining lights and funny looking pills; she spins, and spins, and spins until the world is nothing but a hazy blur.

When she opens her eyes the next morning she's honestly surprised that the thoughts are still there. Maybe some holes are too deep to fill.

She'll try anyway.


	3. Blair

Drabble [100 words] for CW-land

Prompt: _final_

* * *

The morning after, she wakes up with a cut on her face and an ache in her heart.

Not even Blair Waldorf can pretend this away, and it's not like she has to, everyone else is doing it for her.

So she leaves Chuck, and she leaves the prince. She doesn't go to Paris though, and she doesn't take Serena with her. It's not running away.

(If anything, it feels like coming back.)

Her cheek heals fast, but the rest of her takes its time. Which is okay, summers in the Hamptons have always been long, and she has time.

.

* * *

Ficlet [147 words] for the female-comment-meme at LJ

Prompt: _I want a lover I don't have to love._

* * *

Love just isn't for her, she decides.

Because, as it turns out, love is nothing like they promised her. All her pretty books and pretty movies are nothing but pretty illusions. Beautiful but fake.

Fake like her parent's marriage, fake like Nate's promise of a fairytale ending. Fake like Chuck's gestures of great love.

Because actions speak louder than words, and she cannot, will not, forgive him. (Them.)

_I'll stand by you through anything _never sounded so wrong before.

Love is neither pure nor unconditional. It is not simple. Love make things complicated. Love hurts.

Sometimes she wonders why it took her so long to realize it, but she has always been the best at playing pretend.

So when she kisses Dan Humphrey, in a bathroom at some social function, her arms around his neck and his hands slowly slipping up her skirt, it's definitely _not_ love.


End file.
